Starbucks and Oil Changes Planned Next to Ruthie’s Place on Richmond, Scooped Up by SweetCup Gelato

From beneath yesterday’s sunset glare off the new Big Tex Storage midrise on Richmond Ave, a reader captured the splintery wreckage of long-empty Cierra Interiors at the corner with Woodhead St. Plans to stick a new Starbucks in its place were submitted back in early November by an entity connected to experienced Starbucks constructor Vaquero Ventures, and the knockout of the building was officially sanctioned just before Christmas. Next door, the land opened up by Vaquero’s teardown of the pair of 2-story brick 4-plexes at 1823 and 1827 Richmond back in August looks to be marked for another Inner Loop outpost of oil change chain Take 5.

And one more door eastward, the former Ruthie’s Place on Richmond looks to be headed for new use by strip-center gelato shop Sweetcup, per some early-stage permits issued in November that note a bar-to-ice-cream-shop conversion. Sweetcup bought the building at 1829 Richmond in September after the bar’s early 2016 shutdown (in the wake of the passing of long-time former owner Ruth Vardilos). Here’s a shot of the whole corner taken in August, shortly after the apartment removal, showing Ruthie’s tucked next to Ely’s Beauty Salon on the far right:

@joel I live behind La Tapatia. My neighbors and I are sort of worried that our landlords are going to be offered a really great deal and we’ll have to move…. My brother and his wife actually lived in the apartments that got torn down. They were actually really nice.

Someone got any information about the small shotgun house on the corner across from King Cole Liquor? I’d hate to see it go to waste; there’s practically no reason to demolish it considering the small/narrow plot of land it sits on. Ideally I’d be happy to live in it.